Food Dollar Series
The Food Dollar Series measures annual expenditures by U.S. consumers on domestically produced food. This data product is composed of three primary series—the marketing bill, the industry group bill, and the primary factors bill—that describe different aspects of the food supply chain. The bills show three different ways to split up the same food dollar. All statistics reported in the dollar bill images represent a percentage of an average annual food dollar expenditure (for more information, see the Glossary page). The same statistics reported in total dollar denominations are available in downloadable tables. These statistics are based on the model introduced in the 2011 report:
A Revised and Expanded Food Dollar Series: A Better Understanding of Our Food CostsData are available from 1993 to 2023 and are updated annually. The data for 2024 will be released on November 18, 2025.
Roughly every 5 years since 1997, a new benchmark data source is published based on the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census’ U.S. Economic Census and the USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Census of Agriculture. With a new benchmark, all data in the Food Dollar Series covering years since the previous benchmark undergo a final revision. In this year’s release, the 2017 benchmark data were integrated into the Food Dollar Series, so the nominal data from 2013 to 2017 have been reconciled to the benchmark data for 2012 and 2017. The real data for all years have been updated to use 2017 prices. Beginning with the updates published in 2014, 16 additional commodity-specific tables have been added to the data series that report only benchmark-year statistics (for more information, see Commodity Tables in the Glossary page).
The 2024 Food Dollar update introduces data for 2023 and revises data for 1993–2022. This update reflects the reconciliation of the USDA, ERS Food Dollar to the 2017 benchmark input-output tables and comprehensive updates released by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in 2023, which is a source of data for the Food Dollar. The comprehensive updates can impact the total and relative values of the quantities reported in the marketing bill and the industry group bill. Further, the Food Dollar uses input-output data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which also uses the BEA data. The 2023 data from BLS also incorporates BEA’s comprehensive updates, and this Food Dollar update reflects BLS’s revisions. Additionally, BLS revised its system of accounts to match the 2022 North American Industry Classification Systems (NAICS) in 2023. This resulted in industry group composition changes.
A 10-year review of the model that produces Food Dollar Series statistics is underway. Once completed, there is the potential for historical revisions to the Food Dollar Series. Meanwhile, the usual nonbenchmark year principal data source updates are provided (tables 1–6). This update includes new nominal and real data for 2023, changes the base year for inflation-adjusted (real) dollars to 2017 dollars, and revises the data from earlier years to incorporate published changes to the source data from BEA and BLS.